On the Way to Abona. Andrzej Stasiuk's photographic journeys

This analysis of Andrzej Stasiuk's novel 'Jadac do Babadag' (Driving to Babadag) is undertaken from a narratological, genological and philosophy-of-history standpoint. It attempts at describing the operations carried out by the writer on the story he has authored. Narration is recognized as being enchanted and extrapolated from the figure of a photograph which forms a fetish but also, an inspiration for the space being described and for how time is reflected upon. As the engine of the narrative and actual reason for taking a trip (the photo taken by André Kertész), inspiration of a narrative method, the way of coding the reality and a figure which can best describe a human's existence in time and space - according to Stasiuk's concept - photograph(y) shows a tragic tear between the need to record things and death, between an uncertain prospect of infiniteness and mortality.